Aftermath from a good night.

There's a post-script to my last post, but first, a pre-script:

A couple months ago, a mixed martial arts/extreme fighting studio moved in next door to the comedy club. More importantly, they moved in to the space that shares a wall with the comedy club's showroom. Even more importantly, there is practically no soundproofing in that wall.

Now, on with the story:

After my set, I was watching the rest of the show. During my friend's set, someone next door started using the speed bag next door. And it was pretty frickin' annoying. So, in the same fashion as shushing a loud talker in a movie theater, I went next door with the intent to politely ask them to keep it down.

The conversation went like this...

ME: Excuse me, is someone in the back using a speed bag or a punching bag in the back?

THEM: Probably, why?

ME: Well, they're in the middle of a show next door and the noise is kinda disrupting the show.

THEM: (in a huff) Let me tell you something, we have to listen to your noise every night, and you don't-

And that's when I walked out. I didn't go over there to get yelled it, nor am I the kind of guy wanting to walk into a martial arts studio to pick a fight.

Notice I said "They're in the middle of a show..." and not we. I was not presenting myself as a representative of the club's management. I went over there as an annoyed member of the audience, and I kept it perfectly diplomatic, kept a civil tone and never lost my cool.

Anyway, the noise stopped. Not because I spoke up, but because they heard my friend make a comment on it from the stage about being heckled by a wall. The acting manager of the club had a word with me after I got back from next door, asking me to let them handle that stuff from now on. Which I got, but I figured they might respond better from hearing from a member of the audience rather than people they've been butting heads with since they moved in.

So, lesson learned, or so I thought.

By Saturday, I had heard through the grapevine that the comedy club owner had found out about what I did. Panic set in. How pissed was she about this? What was gonna happen to me? For the next four days, I calculated possible scenarios. No matter what, I figured I kissed my chances of ever emceeing at the club goodbye. Would I be temporarily barred from performing? Would I be permanently banned from performing or from the club altogether? I had no way of getting in touch with the owner, thus I had no way of knowing what my fate would be.

Finally, Wednesday night came, and I was still anxious about my fate. First good sign was I got let in the door. Second good sign, I found out that what I did was just one of many things that went wrong on the one night they owner was out of town. By comparison, my indiscretion was small potatoes. The owner had a talk with me, and things were OK, provided that I never do anything like it again. Again, lesson learned.

But I found out that who the owner heard from about me: the people next door. So, obviously the data was skewed in my favor from the start. But after talking to the club owner, I had a better understanding about the tensions between the comedy club and the extreme fighting dojo next door. I mean, after all, we're all training for the same purpose: to entertain people. We tell jokes, they beat each other into early onset Parkinson's Disease. Which seems oddly parallel, given some of the crowds I've performed for.

But it was the other things that went on that night that is bringing about some changes in conduct for open-mic-ers. We'll each have to sign a list of rules that, if broken, would carry consequences. Common sense stuff, mostly, but still... they wouldn't have to enact these rules if not for the people who didn't respect the rules, or the club itself for that matter.

Time for some professionalism, and now I'm on track.

A good night

Last night, I had a great night at the comedy club. It could've gone downhill very easily, but my stuff killed.

I drew the fifth spot out of seven for open mic night. I drew up my set list. I was gonna try some new stuff: Revised versions of the Chinese food and Hitler jokes that I posted on New Joke Different Day, a new bit about this poor kid from New Jersey that I read about whose name happens to be Adolf Hitler Campbell, and finished it all up with my "To Catch a Predator" bit... Always a good closer.

But...

The guy that went up second, it was his first time. I felt a sense of dread as he did over a minute about Chinese food. I was about to re-do my set list before a friend told me I shouldn't. He said, "Do your joke. Fuck him. They should hear at least one funny Chinese food joke tonight." So, I felt better.

The woman who went up before me, went up and did five minutes about being the crazy cat lady. She went over by one minute, which happens from time to time, but when you get the 30 second warning light, it's a sign you should wrap things up. The flashing red "Get off the stage, now!" light, is NOT the time to say, "OK, one more before I get off." It's not any different if you're doing well and getting great laughs. "You get four minutes" means you get four fucking minutes, not five.

The fact that she did five minutes about her cat, and boring the audience in the process, made me feel better about doing my Chinese food joke, because it also involved the killing and cooking of cats. These two comics I speak of, while their material was hardly what you'd call-what's the word I'm looking for-GOOD, I owe them for a tremendous setup.

The Chinese food joke, one of my darkest, was a decent opener. The crowd could've easily turned on me, but i managed to pull it off in a manner that no one took it too seriously. It also helped that I acknowledged immediately afterward that it was a pretty sick joke. Then, I went into the Hitler joke, and I ad-libbed at the end of it, "What, did you think I was gonna get up here and do pro-Hitler material? I'm German, but I'm not that German!"

That segued perfectly into a new bit about this kid, and it was a good middle-of-the-set joke. If you read the article, you can tell that most of the material writes itself. I gotta get it on video, it's pretty good. I got the 30-second light, and the "To Catch A Predator" joke fit perfectly, as it usually takes 20-25 seconds. Perfectly timed, and I was proud of how it all came together.

I dig doing this stuff so much.

Do androids dream of fried chicken?

If you listen closely, when RoboCop picks up the fridge, I swear the music playing is the "western" theme from Back to the Future Part III... Which only makes this all the more insane.

New Blog

I started a new blog to collect the jokes I'll be writing each day: New Joke, Different Day. I'll still post these jokes on this blog, but only when I'm particularly proud of them.

A Joke a Day - Day 2

I have this one friend who, every time we'd eat Chinese food, would make the same tired joke about how you never see stray animals near the restaurant. Then he'd make meowing and barking sounds every time I'd take a bite. For years he would do this, until one day, when his mouth was full of Pad Thai, I said, "You know what else you don't see near Chinese restaurants? Missing child posters."

20 ways to organize your James Bond DVD Collection

1. Alphabetical.
2. Chronological.
3. Domestic box office gross (with or without adjustment for inflation).
4. Body count.
5. Estimated dollar amount of property damage throughout each film.
6. Order in which you first saw them.
7. Alphabetical by director's first name.
8. Cheesiness of villain's plan.
9. Numerology value of Bond girls' names.
10. Cost to license Bond's vehicle if he lived in New Mexico.
11. Total number of scenes in which any character is saying something smug.
12. Number of respectable films each Bond girl has made after appearing in a Bond film.
13. Plausibility of Q's gadgets (either by today's standards or the time the film was made).
14. Number of times the word "revenge" is uttered.
15. Suckiness of theme song.
16. Number of scenes in which you almost see a woman's nipple, divided by level of disappointment in the situation (graded on a scale from 1 to 10).
17. Applicability of film's name as the title of a porno (start with Octopussy and work your way down the list).
18. Order in which you can recite the titles without looking them up.
19. Number of times you've noticed each film has played on late night cable since you bought the DVD.
20. Random

A Joke a Day

Not necessarily a new year's resolution, but an experiment I wish to attempt, to see if I could do it. I'm gonna write one joke each day for a year. Now, I can't guarantee that they'll all be funny or even make sense, but at least I'm gonna try. If I miss a day on the blog, I'll post an extra one for each day I miss. And. Here. We... Go:

1/1/09 - I believe new year's resolutions to be a little too cliché. I suggest using a different holiday for yourself to make resolutions, that way no one will ever see it coming. I, for one, will be using Arbor Day, which is fitting because I really want to stop compulsively lighting forest fires.